Final Mechanical Setup
The group initially started with using five infrared sensors in the front but then realized that it was unnecessary to have so much and the system would be most efficient with the use of only 2 infrared sensors.
The Arduino has been mounted on acrylic and all of the sensors have been mounted through convenient means whether it would be another acrylic mount or zip ties.
Performances...
Before mounting the car, the RC car was able to head toward waypoints and then update to go to a new one; however, during the process of permanently soldering all of the sensors, the compass module was wired incorrectly and was overloaded with voltage. This means that the 3.3V Compass had double the voltage flow through it, essentially destroying its circuits and making it return faulty numbers. A new compass was ordered but it took a week to arrive and unfortunately, this new compass was also broken. This means that the waypoint traveling objective cannot be fully tested for all arguments and errors but is at the stage where it works.
While the GPS was down, the State Control was completed and the object is able to avoid objects at low speeds. The scenarios from week 5-6 were tested and the robot was able to avoid the objects with no problem. The only problem was when there was a wall in front of it and it had no idea where to go from there.
Conclusion
The GPS Guided Autonomous Robot can be considered a success, as it was able to clear the objectives that were given to it. Firstly, the Arduino Mega was able to utilize the motors on the RC car by sending servo commands to them. With fullcontrol of the car, the Arduino gathered data from its sensors and used advanced algorithms to find the desired heading and drove the RC car accordingly to the waypoint. While driving to the waypoint, the Arduino utilized its state-control program to avoid any events that may interfere with its path using its infrared sensors and drove around the objects that were in the way.
Future Work
Though this project can be considered a success, there were many shortcomings that can be improved on. Because the compass module was damaged due to overvoltage, the tests for 100% accuracy of the GPS algorithms were cut short. This means that though the car worked, it is impossible to be able to conclude the project as a success and will require more tests in the future. Since ROS was not included in the final product,
